The Navy as a Fighting Machine eBook

maneuvers without accident or mistake? Can we
really believe that they take no part and feel no
pride in those magnificent pageants on the ocean?
From the earliest times, men have personified ships,
calling a ship “he” or “she,”
and giving ships the names of people, and of states;
and is not a ship with its crew a living thing, as
much as the body of a man? The body of a man
is in part composed of bones and muscles, and other
parts, as truly things of matter as are the hull and
engines of a ship. It is only the spirit of life
that makes a man alive, and permits the members of
his body, like the members of a ship, to perform their
appointed tasks.

But even if this notion seems fanciful and absurd,
we must admit that as surely as the mind and brain
and nerves and the material elements of a man must
be designed and made to work in harmony together,
so surely must all the parts of any ship, and all the
parts of any navy, parts of material and parts of personnel,
be designed and made to work in harmony together;
obedient to the controlling mind, and sympathetically
indoctrinated with the wish and the will to do as
that mind desires.

CHAPTER IX

PREPARING THE ACTIVE FLEET

John Clerk, of Eldin, Scotland, never went to sea,
and yet he devised a scheme of naval tactics, by following
which the British Admiral Rodney gained his victory
over the French fleet between Dominica and Guadeloupe
in April, 1782. Clerk devised his system by the
simple plan of thinking intently about naval actions
in the large, disregarding such details as guns, rigging,
masts, and weather, and concentrating on the movements
of the fleets themselves, and the doings of the units
of which those fleets were made. He assisted
his mental processes by little models of ships, which
he carried in his pockets, and which he could, and
did, arrange on any convenient table, when he desired
to study a problem, or to make a convert.

He was enabled by this simple and inexpensive device
to see the special problems of fleet tactics more
clearly than he could have done by observing battles
on board of any ships; for his attention in the ships
would have been distracted by the exciting events
occurring, by the noise and danger, and by the impossibility
of seeing the whole because of the nearness of some
of the parts. The amazing result was that he
formed a clearer concept of naval tactics than any
admiral of his time, finally overcame the natural
prejudice of the British navy, and actually induced
Rodney to stake on the suggestion of a non-military
civilian his own reputation and the issue of a great
sea fight. Furthermore, the issue was crowned
with success.

Nothing could be simpler than Clerk’s method.
It was, of course, applied to tactics, but similar
methods are now applied to strategy; for strategy
and tactics, as already pointed out, are based on
similar principles, and differ mainly in the fact that
strategy is larger, covers more space, occupies more
time, and involves a greater number of quantities.